OMG!
More technology-inspired words have entered the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as well as the first graphical symbol to signify a word in the dictionary's history.
The popular abbreviation of Oh My God; OMG, which is popular among mobile texters has got a place in the Oxford English Dictionary, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Ego-surfing has also crept into the wordy tome and describes the act of vainly Googling or searching on the internet for one's own name. It was apparently first used in 1995.
Also reflecting the heady heights of the early internet years, dotbomb has reportedly been added to the dictionary to describe an internet company that has gone bust or failed big-time. The noun reportedly took off circa dot com bubble time when many investors lost a lot of money speculating on up and coming technology start-ups as well as established players.
Meanwhile readers will apparently come across the first symbol in the new version of the OED if they look up the word ‘heart' as it describes the verb ‘to love'.
While one of the best examples of the use of the symbol, (the first in the OED's 127-year history) is the ad slogan ‘I [heart] NY', its earliest recorded appearance was apparently on a car bumper sticker from 1984 that read ‘I [heart] my dog's head'.
"While symbols do become spelt-out words relatively frequently, it's usually only with a mundane meaning as the name of the symbol - "star" for *, "hash" for #, and so on," Graeme Diamond, principal editor of the OED's new words group reportedly said.
"It's very unusual for it to happen in such an evocative and tangential way, and this is due to the special place the heart (as an organ of the human body) occupies in the language. In English, since the late 12th century the heart had been thought of as the seat of love and affection," he apparently added.
The symbol accompanies 45,437 new words to join the latest revision of the dictionary, which include the words Wag, muffin top, lashed (as in drunk) domestic goddess and crack-up, among others.
There are also reportedly more words signifying Britain's multicultural make-up including: Vietnamese sandwich banh mi, a Mexican taquito and Greek slow-cooked lamb dish kleftiko.
The OED was reportedly first published in a hefty 10 volumes in 1884 but the second edition took 100 years to compile as the ‘book' had doubled in size to define 59 million words.
The latest words will apparently be added to the online dictionary.
